Cynara
by Rez1
Summary: Sark is not what he was. Sequel to In tenebris. Thanks to Vanzetti, Auburn, and Rach for the beta work. The Dowson poem referenced in the title is found in its entirety at the end of the story.
1. Run Time

RUN TIME _Prologue_

_The woman's heavy hair brushes his skin as she sways above him, her hands on either side of him; she covers him, envelopes him, silent, skilled, alert to every response that might increase the pleasure she gives him. She is lovely, a feast for the senses, and her smile is tranquil as she rocks against the gathering intensity of his stroke. She flicks back her hair and raises herself slightly, letting sensation localize, enticing him upward, harder, and he rises into her from the cool bed until orgasm flashes through him like sheet lightning, bright and smooth and soundless. Her hands are soothing as he comes to rest, light and pleasant against his heated skin. Finally she dismounts, attends to the condom, dresses with quiet dispatch. She smiles again when he happens to open his eyes. He watches from the bedroom of the suite as she slips out the door, then rises and resets the telltales, checks the electronics, throws the lock. He finds the bed again and plunges into heavy sleep, the first in weeks. _

_Force the brain to let the body rest. Saturate the senses; shut down, for a while, the endless recalculation of risk and advantage. _

_Kill memory._

_One_

Working capital: the world is awash in money, Sark reminds himself, without Rambaldi's name attached to it.

"—Delighted, should the volume of your deposits bear out, certainly," Mr. Leung is saying. Sark is tired and he's bored, but it won't do to rush the man.

"—Several lines of credit, yes. Direct access to funds from many desirable points-of-sale, naturally: ship brokerages, say, or perhaps"—a delicate pause—"less orthodox venues."

Sark smiles perfunctorily. The day's third business meeting is winding down. Things are going smoothly but the courtesies are tedious.

"And obviously we would be most interested in an equity stake in any venture… More tea? A tour of the facility, then." Ramillies Bank AG (Schweiz) has a new client. Mr. Leung of the Hong Kong office is charmed.

Sark strolls beside the banker, glad to be moving at last. His head aches, slightly, in the cool air. Every office in every high-rise in Hong Kong shares the same morgue-like chill, overcompensating for the humid furnace outside.

Fortieth floor of tower three, Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building, a relatively conservative choice in light of the local predilection for showy architecture. Outside the building's glass skin, its grim exoskeleton frames the view. The interior of this floor is transparent, as well, its core a huge glass cube.

Sark stares down the long sightline out the other side of the enormous space. Mr. Leung's urbane commentary necessitates a leisurely pace along the endless, overcooled corridor, wide as an LA freeway.

A selection of private storage vaults, Mr. Leung explains, gesturing. It looks more like someone's idea of a stylish library: tables, carrels, alcoves. People drifting along the aisles of vaults, some seated, apparently studying. No books.

Armed guards at the heavy glass doors.

Nor is there any good reason why that should make Sark uneasy, but he suddenly finds he's no longer bored. Experiencing a slight feeling of confinement, in fact, despite expansive views through the transparent barriers.

A movement in the foreground, then, through the near glass wall, and the banker's chatter recedes as Sark gathers his senses, headache forgotten, seeking a focus. There's something—something—he can't tell what. Something has just happened.

It's a ludicrous conviction in this sterile, white-noise environment. Residual sensitivity, that's all; even after a year or more, glass walls make him irrationally edgy. He's looking in from the outside, this time. It should be funny.

Nevertheless.

Mr. Leung falls back politely as his guest slows the pace further.

And stops. He's still as a scenting animal, with no idea why. He waits, the other man patient beside him. Some threat here. He scans the group inside the cube, not a clue what he's looking for—some anomaly—there. That one. The woman. Not Chinese: brown hair, too tall, square-shouldered. His pulse jumps.

He can't see her face, only her seated figure, three-quarters angle, from behind, but he knows, he knows, and he's rehearsed this moment every day and every bloody night for the past year—

And there it is; she moves again, right hand. The long hair brushed out of her face, swept behind her ear, unthinking gesture that she'll repeat—his heart is racing—several times an hour, because that lock of hair never stays anchored. He forces himself down from full flight/fight but his heart won't listen. It's all he can do to keep her name between his teeth.

She moves once more, turns her head, reaching for a banker's box farther down the table, and he sees the profile: high slash of cheekbone, ripe mouth, and now his heart threatens to stop altogether.

Not Irina.

Sydney Bristow.

He takes another breath, hyperalert with adrenaline and, he discovers, a fine, cold anger. He waits, needing to be sure of his voice.

"Very impressive," he finally tells Mr. Leung, who's been waiting for some comment. "Reassuringly secure and—quite attractive, as well." The other man smiles appreciatively, following his gaze.

"We do hope," he agrees with amusement, "to please our clients, when they have occasion to visit."

He goes on, with the air of an obliging tour guide, "The lady is Miss Lee, a scholar from, ah, Vancouver, I believe. Assisting one of our distinguished professors at the university. She is studying some family papers, stored here, having to do with" —he coughs apologetically— "British expatriate collaboration, Nazi, you understand, during the Japanese occupation. There were rare cases, I regret." As though he were personally responsible.

"She is making the translation from the German," he adds. "The family have agreed to allow access."

Back to earth and thinking fast. He briefly considers whether the man might be Irina's. Her order, directing this sighting? Her way of letting him know he's playing on her field again?

Odds against. Alex Leung's got mid-level associations with Sun Yee On, a giant among triads; he knows that Sark's references come from the top of the pyramid. Freelancing for Irina against that level of influence would do him permanent damage on his home ground. And he's not a long-term asset of Irina's. Sark knows that signature, and it's nowhere in the extensive file he's assembled on Mr. Alexander Leung Wing Chan.

So the man's a potential well of information. "How unusual," Sark says softly. "That seems—trusting." He looks back at the seated woman.

She's making notes in longhand. The lock of hair has come loose again and he's breathing past a sudden constriction in his throat. You damned fool, he thinks, and the anger ices his blood another few degrees in the frigid air.

Mr. Leung is watching his client, not the woman. "There are many ways, you see," he says casually, "of paying a debt."

Sark shows him a bland smile. "My dear sir," he says, "I'm afraid I'm a conservative at heart." He lets the smile widen just a bit, never losing sight of the woman on the other side of the glass.

"So I gathered," Mr. Leung replies, smiling in turn. "Your air of—assurance, mm?—does suggest so. Yes, unusual. In one so young, I mean to say." Another smile. Mr. Leung adds, "Would you wish to see the terrace garden? Also very beautiful."

Sark has always known it would be impossible not to intersect Irina's operational lines at some point; she's been building her networks for as long as he's been alive. But it's been more than a year since he walked into that nightclub in Stockholm and waited to be taken. He's seen no sign of her.

"I need one month," she'd said, the litany going through his head once more as he watches her daughter through the chilly, armored glass. "I'll see to your extraction personally."

He'd held out almost half a year under interrogation in that other glass cage, waiting for her, before finding his own way out. He'll never be that stupid again.

Beside him, Mr. Leung looks up inquiringly. Sark takes a deep, silent breath, with a feeling that the air's a little richer than it had been sixty seconds ago. Fatigue hovers, a constant, but he ignores it in favor of this new sensation tickling him with a barbed and icy claw. He smiles once more.

"Yes," he says pleasantly, "I'd enjoy that."

_Two_

The bank's patrons favor the Peninsula, in Kowloon, over most of Hong Kong's more centrally located hotels. Mr. Leung sends his new client back across the harbor in a sleek helicopter, a seven-minute trip the pilot must make a dozen times every business day; the man looks as though he might even be asleep. Sark takes the private rooftop elevator to his suite a few floors below.

He knows there's still a small, poisoned shard of hope in him somewhere—that Irina had never intended to leave him there, that she'd struggled to reach him but couldn't; that she was dead, or fighting for her own survival, and could find no way to get to him. That she'd tried.

The other explanation's simpler. It was what she really wanted all along, to mend what she'd broken when she abandoned her husband and daughter. And what, moreover, she believed was required to triumph in her long contest with Sloane over the solution to Rambaldi's puzzle.

Jack Bristow. Sydney Bristow. Irina. The family circle, complete at last.

It doesn't really matter anymore.

He's spent the last eight months in overdrive, patching the holes in his reputation, establishing himself as a top-tier independent without, he hopes, so much as causing a tremor in the vast, shapeless web of Irina's influence. Planning.

Three months, two contracts, the first winning the second, as planned. He took out the second target and arranged to implicate his client's political rival as a _douceur_. It got him the reference he'd aimed for from the start.

Another three months, research and advance work. Third client pays for all, and when everything's in place he'll make the jump from freelance to executive of a small, elite organization in one quick move. He's got a few dependable lower-level contacts in various places and he's been talent-spotting for future recruitment, but the real work is all on him. He hasn't stopped moving since he jammed the fucking CIA almost a year ago, and he's not about to back off now.

Especially not for Irina, or her daughter.

Third client: Mr. John Chiu, of Hong Kong, San Francisco, and New York.

The Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China is a giant laundry for profits from the sale of narcotics, easeful treasure from the Golden Triangle. Service providers bring the money into Hong Kong's labyrinthine, under-regulated financial systems and disperse it, deloused and legal, to the global investment community—retaining a healthy share for themselves. The sheer scale of activity is stunning.

Consequently, criminal culture achieves a rare sophistication here. The executives in charge of competing branches within this area of enterprise conduct endless quiet wars for status and dominance. There's a delicate balance, necessary in a society so tightly packed into its environment, of rule and transgression, even at the highest reaches.

Sark has created an opportunity to buy in: a private murder. It's not policy, or pre-emptive action, or even profitable. It breaks the rules. But the man who commissioned it is situated to give him a share in the lucrative business of turning drug money into upstanding investment capital; as an outsider he runs less chance of discovery and reprisal, and he'll be invisible, a silent partner, when the terms are met.

He knows Chiu's got fourteen ways figured to cross the deal once it's done. He knows each of those fourteen ways has consequences Chiu's not willing to suffer. The upcoming meeting is the one where he explains that to Chiu.

It took him three solid months to cover that ground. He's got no second, no right hand—no one, yet, whom he trusts enough to handle such mortal issues.

He'll give the whole meeting half an hour, he decides; if he's not satisfied by then he'll walk away. Chiu will cave, eventually. He loved a woman who left him for someone else. He wants the man's blood.

He's a fool, but that's not material. The woman's brother is a potential problem—but again, that's Chiu's lookout. The deed won't reverberate unduly; it's actually fairly simple. For everyone, he imagines, except Chiu, who'll learn that he's bought nothing, in the end—certainly not satisfaction.

But now there's Sydney, and that means Irina.

Chiu's job is the least of it; he's been investing extensively, using his personal reserves in anticipation of the flow of new funds. He'll have to postpone the next trip to Shanghai, find out what Sydney's up to and what Irina's interests are in this game. He puts a hand to his eyes, briefly, to shut out the glare of the overhead lights. The timing couldn't be worse. But Irina's a threat that can't wait.

_Three _

Tagging Sydney is almost a joke under the circumstances: he's solo and obviously foreign. He's got access to a few low-level contractors, but not nearly enough tested resources to handle the job properly. No way to do it right; no choice, either.

He's put off three meetings and an ungodly amount of research to take care of this. The heat intensifies his resentment.

Four days and he's got nothing definite. Her tradecraft is almost nil; she's taking no more than elementary precautions. It's atypical—Sydney's sharp, creative, and nearly clairvoyant about the environment when she's operational. Now she seems almost asleep. It's uncanny, not right.

Her pattern is home-university-market-home, on foot and by public transit. It's varied the first day by a trip to Ramillies, no surprise but also no way to get inside the bank unnoticed. He picks her up again when she comes out two hours later, stays with her easily through the raucous streets, to the stalls in the Central Market and up the escalator past Hollywood Road. Home: a block of flats in the Mid-levels, separated by wide green spaces from the other huge residential blocks in the immediate area.

He checks the mailboxes once she's in the elevator. This an expat ghetto; the labels include English. There are five Lees but only one V-for-Victoria. Second floor, number 221, a cheaper let near the ground. He goes up the stairs, finds the door, marks the probable orientation of the interior windows.

The blinds are down. He settles next to a tree across the landscaped grounds, cateye binoculars in the backpack he's been carrying all day. It's all but raining and he's boiling with impatience. Come on, Sydney, he thinks, leaning his head back against the rough bark. Give me something to do.

Nothing.

Day two, early, she goes to the Zoo before heading to the university, joins the crowd at the fountain staircase in Peng Fau Garden. He drifts from tour group to tour group, watching through a pair of Zeiss birding glasses while she and a hundred others follow the old woman at the top of the stairs through the complete t'ai chi set. Her face is absolutely blank as she turns from each move into its successor.

White Crane Spreads Its Wings. But who's the bird, Sydney, and who the snake?

She lacks Irina's coiled menace, he decides; she doesn't need it. She's physically perfect, intention and action all one thing to her—thought into motion, nothing between. He can barely breathe in the humid air.

No contacts, no dead drop, no sign of anything.

He follows her to the cool underground of the MTR.

Day three. The heat makes everything more difficult; he'd like nothing better than for her to disappear. Instead, he trudges to Man Mo Temple in her wake, two o'clock of another stifling day. The courtyard is a pandemonium of vendors and supplicants; he loses her in the crowd, risks going inside to see if she's ducked out of the chaos. The interior is cool and dark and he pauses to let his eyes adapt.

Come on, Sydney. Make it worth my while.

He drifts methodically around the inside perimeter for a full ten minutes—fucking hell, she must have seen him, shaken him off. But he spots her at last, back in the shadows against a pillar, sitting cross-legged, staring at nothing. The smoke from a bank of burning joss sticks drifts past her. She blinks, occasionally, and once he sees her shoulders rise and fall, as if she's taken a deep breath.

An hour later she gets to her feet and leaves. MTR, market, home.

Finally, a contact. Sark is lounging in the shade of the university's main library forecourt on the fourth day, with the _Post_ and bottle of water, good for another twenty minutes before he'll have to change position. And here she comes, north entrance of the building opposite, looking over her shoulder. He folds the newspaper casually and gets to his feet. His eyes burn with fatigue.

She turns onto the walk and is intercepted by a tall man who draws her by the arm to the grassy verge, apparently to her surprise. Sark fades deeper into the shadow of the library and takes out the birding glasses. He'll be noticed by the curious, but that can't be helped. He's sweating freely, disliking the wet track along his hairline as he raises the glasses.

No idea who the man might be: Chinese, probably about middle age, handsome. He's speaking with obvious urgency to Sydney, who looks up at him gravely. No evasion, no tradecraft, not even the most basic precaution against being observed, overheard, recorded, photographed.

Not a typical meet. Not a meet at all, and the man reaches up as though helpless and draws a tender line with his fingertips from her temple to her jaw. Sark hears himself take a sharp breath in the heavy air. Good God, he thinks in disgust. Another fish on the hook, Sydney?

She hasn't moved, makes no gesture in return, no turn of her head into the man's caress, but something in the regret on her face tightens Sark's grip on the glasses and he's surprised to find that he hates her a little, for just a moment. The man's hand lingers against her skin and yes, her cheekbones are a miracle straight from Tartary. Irina's Slav but her daughter—

She's saying nothing and the Zeiss lenses show with flawless clarity the bent-bow perfection of her mouth, how it dives in at the corners, how there's a tension to it, as though she's thinking explosive thoughts. The glasses slip in his sweating hands.

The man's arm drops to his side and he stands there, despair in the slack hands and the set of the shoulders. Sark forces his teeth apart and realigns his grip on consciousness. That's enough, he thinks, watching the man slew himself into the path of oncoming foot traffic and walk away. That's enough, as Sydney looks down, her face blank again. She sets off almost blindly toward the market and he lets her go. He's finished watching.

It'll have to be tonight, and it'll have to be the hard way. He finds he's looking forward, a bit, to that.

_Four_

He has no intention of actually hurting her—not seriously. He knows better than most that real damage, where Sydney is concerned, is Irina's province exclusively, all others please note.

Her flat is tiny and barren, holds nothing but a few changes of clothes and some incidentals. He finds the little HK under the pillow on her narrow bed—a cot, really. He ejects the round from the chamber and pockets the clip, replaces the gun.

And here she comes. He moves before she's even inside the door, giving her no time to sense his presence in the dimness.

He tries for a chokehold from behind but she's too good, slides out of his grip like water through a net, driving her elbow hard into his belly and turning like a dervish. He accepts the hit, enjoying the brute smack of bone against muscle, as the price for a quick sweep at her ankles, but she goes vertical on a sharp breath and launches a kick for good measure. That's fine, because he can dodge, and it gives him the split-second opening he needs to catch her mid-turn and bring her jarringly to earth, on her feet but just barely.

They come to stasis with the advantage all his. She's lost; a move in any direction will break a bone or tear a ligament and he's got leverage every which way. His right hand curves lightly around her neck from behind.

But for Irina he could solve this whole problem so easily, he thinks, and moves his thumb along the soft skin under her jawline, his face against her hair. She smells very slightly of something dark—vetiver or sandalwood, maybe—and he's briefly displaced because Irina—

"Are you going to kill me," she asks, and he can feel the tension in her jaw, "or just fuck me?" Her voice is murderous. His thumb finds the artery in that tender spot below the bone, presses just enough to make her gray out for a second or two. Her head lolls briefly, thrillingly against his cheek. He puts his mouth to her ear.

"Now there's a question, Ms. Bristow—" He gives her a sudden, comprehensive shove because he feels her preparing to move, slides forward in syncopation with her stumble, regaining his hold.

"—And we'll get to it, I assure you, but first—" Another shove, her left shoulder hitting the wall hard. "You're going to tell me a story." He forces her legs wider, keeping her off balance.

"Concisely. Accurately. _Immediately_." Tightening the lock on her right arm viciously with each word. Getting an involuntary sound out of her with each jolt.

"You know, Sark, I didn't—think a professional could afford that kind of kink," she says, gasping a little, and he pulls her closer, smiling into her hair, inhaling luxuriously. Sandalwood.

Smoke from those burning joss sticks, he remembers, when she sits at the temple thinking—whatever it is she thinks. He can feel the fear bubbling under her bravado and finds it does arouse him, a bit. She's not as smart as she should be. She should know he can't afford to hurt her. His hand tightens around her throat again.

"My dear Sydney" —softly— "you surely don't imagine I do this for just anyone." The sound of her struggling breath sends a little charge of explosive tension down to the base of his spine.

"The Bristow women—no, don't try that—are so distracting," he finishes, "but we're going to address that later—"

"What—do you want, Sark?" A little gasp there.

And that deserves another wrench of the arm. Her answering groan is satisfying but this is new territory for him. He wonders briefly where the line is, how eager it's acceptable to be. She feels very good, so snug against him. He speaks softly into her ear, a few strands of her fine hair brushing his mouth.

"Don't." Again, a small movement of the locked arm. Again, a sharp, pained sound. "Don't be stupid." There's a desperate rhythm to her breathing now. He lightens the pressure on her throat.

"Will you at least ask me a goddamn question?" She's hoarse but he can't tell whether it's rage or pain or just the bruise from his too-enthusiastic grip. He smiles again, though she can't see.

"Sydney. Whose operation? The objective?"

Silence.

"_Now_, Sydney."

A scraping breath.

"Forget it, Sark—_ah_—"

He doesn't quite dislocate the shoulder. The next breath is more like a sob.

"Where—" he finds he's clenching his teeth "—where is your mother? And, Sydney, what does she want?"

He feels her weight, suddenly, as though she's decided to relax against him. He compensates, preparing for a countermove.

But she's still.

It's so unexpected that he's off balance, just briefly—and she reads him like yesterday's news, he remembers that now; she's out of his reach with a savage kick. He barely manages to dodge before she's got the HK in her fist and pointed at his face.

He's got the clip. There's nothing in the chamber.

The flat is inadequately cooled and he's aware of a knot in his belly. He understands clearly that it's his own stupidity that's produced the impasse. This shouldn't be happening at all. There's a brief, measuring pause in which her ragged breathing is clearly audible. She lowers the useless gun.

"The landlord was right about this place," she says conversationally. "The feng shui sucks."

Typical. The shoulder, at least, must be causing her pain, and her eyes are furious because he frightened her and she knows he knows it.

"Good evening, Sydney," he replies politely. "I would have knocked but I thought you'd react badly."

"Like hell, Sark. What do you want?" She hasn't moved but he can tell she's considering it. "I'd like the clip back when you leave," she adds. "It's the only one I've got."

He's calmer now, looking at her across the small room, and he breathes deliberately, fighting self-disgust. Six months locked up like a rat in a cage, almost a year clawing his way out of the wreck, and the proximity of Irina's daughter undoes him so badly he wants to kill her? Fuck, no. Fatigue drags at him and he flexes his hands, dismissing it irritably.

"Suppose," he says, "we sit and talk. Do you think we might manage that, Sydney?"

Useless. He learns nothing.

"I'm out in the cold, Sark," she tells him. "But that doesn't mean I'll give you word one."

She knows nothing of Irina, or Sloane, or their plans, individually or severally, she says. Isn't that his department? She ran, after discovering Tippin bleeding out in the bathroom of her apartment. She says.

Activated the first of several identities she'd long ago prepared. Grabbed the cached money and weapons and ran. Not even her lover knew about the motorcycle in storage, the numbered accounts, the hacked records establishing patterns of activity for each stolen ID. Double agents trust themselves, full stop.

Even the best have blind spots.

Jack Bristow? he asks. Michael Vaughn? No contact in all this time?

"You think I'm stupid, Sark?" she says harshly. "I'm worse than poison. Let them chase me all over the fucking globe. It's safer than the alternative."

Besides which, she adds, the place leaks like a sieve, hasn't he noticed? Meaning the CIA.

She asks what he's getting from Sloane, as though he's some sort of bounty hunter, and she's the prize. She shows no sign of knowing that her father is missing—or was, at any rate.

No contact with anyone. No attempt at passive intelligence gathering. No idea, not operational, no, no, no …

She's an accomplished liar.

"How'd you get out?" she asks, and he's sure Irina's already heard the story, whether she's told Sydney or not. He considers mentioning Michael Vaughn in that connection, just to gauge the reaction.

No. He'll reserve that.

"You're not with Irina now," she comments. He smiles. You should know, Sydney.

He leaves, finally, with the promise that he'll kill her the next time she crosses his track. Her eyes are haunted but he doesn't flatter himself that his threat is the cause.

Useless, and four precious days wasted.

_Five_

Down Po Shan Road outside the block of flats, and he flags a cab just discharging a fare, traveling in the opposite direction, out of habit. If Irina's covering him evasion's hopeless; she already knows where he is, what he's got running. It's just a matter of waiting for the next move.

Back to his suite at the Mandarin Oriental, his pied-à-terre on the Hong Kong side of the harbor. He keeps wanting to laugh at the absurdity of it all, but it won't do; he knows it's just fatigue. He finally drops onto the bed, lies back and lets himself calm down—which is inevitable because the hotel sees fit to cool this suite to within a few degrees of absolute bleeding zero, and he's shivering as the sweat starts to wick off in the dry, refrigerated air.

He can still smell the sandalwood from her hair and that, for some reason, brings on the urge to laugh again. He pulls the duvet over his legs instead, licks his lips, drowsing.

Even now, Irina won't leave him alone. _I need one month_ and her hands against his skin: strong, cruel, sweet, needful touch …

—Refusing to let himself pretend. Keeping his hands relaxed, at his sides. He beds only the best, lately, and wouldn't stoop to getting himself off—especially thinking about her—if his life depended on it. When the need arises, in any event, he pays for the top of the line, since pharmaceuticals are out of the question. And tonight, it seems, is one of those nights after all.

He picks up the phone and dials the unlisted number of an exclusive establishment off Lugard Road. Jiang Furen specializes in amnesia when it's appropriate, but her memory for her clients' preferences is unassailable. The women she manages are exquisitely skilled; he's never yet been dissatisfied.

He's got to get some sleep.

+++++

End Part I


	2. Pearl River Opium

PEARL RIVER OPIUM +++++++++++ One 

Sweat down the side of his neck. The humidity's crushing; even getting from the Jockey Club's portico to the frosty interior of the Rolls is like a swim through a hot bath. Sark leans back against the leather seat, very still. He would acclimate eventually, he supposes. With luck, he won't be here long enough.

One week post-Sydney and no sign of Irina's dogs. Whatever Sydney reported after their encounter, her mother's either discounted him or has decided, more likely, to let him stew. That's fine. He's busy.

A few hours' sleep is absolutely necessary. Tomorrow's meeting in Guangdong involves the provincial party head and two merchant bankers from Singapore; the deal, if it's satisfactory, will clinch a relationship with both the regional Cantonese bureaucracy and Sun Yee On—sealing his alliance with the triad in case Chiu reneges.

Sark's reassured the leadership that he covets no interest in gambling syndicates, the transshipment of narcotics, or the lucrative public construction racket—only in the specialized financial services that have lately enriched the triad. The proposed investment is large, to ensure his place at the table independent of Chiu's sponsorship. Chiu won't like it. That's the idea.

Then there's the next meeting with Chiu himself, and following that a parley with a go-between for Jemaah Islamiyah—and Christ, thugs with political convictions are the worst sort of trash. He hates dealing with fanatics.

He needs to clear his head. He's hardly sure what day it is, lately.

Two 

Helicopter from a private pad in the New Territories following a meeting with his legal staff. The financial structure he's arranged to move his funds with maximum efficiency is almost in place, shell corporations—carefully layered within a few key industries—now registered and spawning holding companies and limited partnerships, their accounts active. He'll take care of the Geneva end later.

The Guangdong deal was a good decision, though expensive. Irina's links to Sun Yee On exist only through the Russian route. He's established ties on the home ground and there'll be a time when that will come up trumps.

Also in the week's take: Evidence of a schism developing within the sectarian organization that controls several major drug routes in the Triangle. That will bear watching, as it may affect the balance of power in the arms trade. It's as well to be prepared; he'll need to do some discreet marketing in northern Africa soon.

Irina's turf, this. His plans don't include a challenge to her interests, where they're dominant. Sometimes, however, she's merely one competitor among many.

Back to the Mandarin despite the longer trip. He has meetings in Central tomorrow; he wants to be close. Rooftop touch and a cool drink waiting in the small lounge below.

Elevator to the suite. Scent of fresh gardenias in the foyer. The inner door, tropical hardwood polished to a high shine—ajar, and the interior light shining through into the dim space he's standing in.

Fucking hell, he's too tired for this. Trust Irina to know that.

The Ruger from the holster at the small of his back, round in the chamber and careful with the slide. No noise from inside—

"I'm sitting in a chair against the far wall, facing the door, Sark."

—Not Irina; it's Sydney.

Bloody, bloody hell.

He waits.

"I've got a pair of knives in an arm sheathe, for street protection, no other weapon. I'm going to toss the sheathe toward the entrance."

Something hits the ground in front of the half-open door. Black, not heavy. Two small blades in a Kevlar mesh sleeve.

Meaningless. She's probably not alone. Would Irina actually believe he'd be foolish enough to underestimate her daughter? He slides back to the elevator, floor-locks it, closes the doors. She'll hear that.

"Sark?"

Darling Sydney. Didn't get enough last time?

"Sark, I'll come through the door if you want me to." And we can kill each other in a small, dim space instead of a larger, well-lit one. But there aren't a lot of choices.

"Do that, Sydney. Hands on your head, please, and keep talking."

—Slowly with the door, pretty Sydney, or I'll have to shoot you before we can sort this out, and there'll be hell's own mess to clean up then.

"Talk, Sydney."

"I'm going to open the door slowly. My hands are on my head. I'm going to kick the knives out the door." Her voice coming closer.

"Leave the knives, please, Sydney." He backs away as far as the elevator doors. Sees one foot in a rain-wet shoe reach to pull the heavy door fully open. Slowly, and this is where her partner will target the sound of his voice and try to blow him away. He sidesteps once, the Ruger steady on the doorway.

"I'm alone. I want to talk. I'm not a threat to you, Sark, I give you my word."

Don't be a bore, Sydney.

He wonders whether she's going to make him hurt her. It's the last thing he wants. She knows it. It's surely why she's here, waiting for him so calmly. He forced this, in a way, with his appearance at her flat a few weeks ago; put the ball in Irina's court. But he doesn't want Sydney here, and he doesn't want to deal with her now.

He's got to get her away from the hotel. Find out where Irina is and what she wants. Get them both out of his bloody way. Sydney appears in the doorway, hands clasped above her head.

He pulls aside the tapestry concealing the fire exit and motions her forward.

Three 

She's so fucking fast and he learns the hard way that he's overextended himself, these last few months. The drink didn't help. Payback time. Hard steel muzzle cool against the sweat at the back of his neck; she could blow the top of his spine away before he'd have the chance to throw an elbow. He hears her panting. At least he's not the only one.

"You stubborn bastard," and he doesn't like the edge to her voice.

—Sudden absence of pressure against his skin, cold steel cylinder gone. The sound of the slide being released, the magazine ejected. The round in the chamber coming out, and he's going to move—

A touch on his right shoulder reflexively spins him left and she's got his wrist before he can process the correct reaction. Holds up his arm between them for a split second, staring him in the eyes, and smacks the Ruger into his open palm. Steps back, and he almost drops the weapon he's suddenly reacquired. Not a weapon, of course, in its current state. She's just standing there.

"There's nobody else, Sark, no operation, no mission. I do t'ai chi in the park because I'm too soft to do anything else. I go to the temple just to sit. I go to the university and the bank and the market and back to my flat and then I do it all over again."

Bloody woman.

She'd spotted him from the first, and he's longing to hit her, in fact, but knows he couldn't, at this point. She's still talking.

"I don't meet anyone. There's nobody to ask, nobody to tell. It's been two months here and one in Vancouver and almost a year before that and I'll tell you the rest if you really want the whole boring story. You're the only familiar face I've seen in all that time. Stop acting like an idiot and invite me in and we'll talk."

Not a credible word in the lot, but something's changed since their last encounter, to bring her here. And if Irina's waiting for them inside he might as well get it over with.

Four 

The suite is empty and overcooled. Sydney shivers a bit, asks to make tea, and he'll allow her the diversion since it gives him time to think. He leans against the wall, watching her, very much on edge and feeling again the seductive tickle of rage in his gut.

Fucking Irina and her fucking offspring, wasting his time with old history. He needs to make her understand that he doesn't care, won't cross her as long as she stays out of his way. That he's neither available nor interested, and only a threat if she makes him one.

Irina's daughter hands him a cup of tea.

He needs the caffeine, so he takes it from her; the situation's so full of risk it's almost absurd to worry about the potential in any one gesture. Poison? Drugs? Ambush, sabotage; a new compendium of carefully layered lies and all-but-verifiable disinformation: Irina's game. He nods toward one of the chairs, when Sydney asks whether she might sit down. She slips out of her wet shoes and folds one leg underneath her on the overstuffed cushion.

Irina and not. Now that she's at rest in the bright light he can see she's thinned down, wrists and ankles more prominent. Same razor-edged cheekbones, yes, and that mouth will never be anything but distracting, but there's something about the whole face that suggests endurance, and the eyes show she's in trouble 

He's starting to wonder, now, whether there might be some truth in her. She takes a breath. She's nervous, he thinks.

"You asked about Irina. I'm going to give you my hypothesis, okay? Feel free to interrupt with questions." Sarcastic, trying for their old style, slanging each other while they traded information. He nods again, watching her brood over her steaming cup. Her resemblance to Irina is less marked when she speaks.

"I think she set you up. Am I right?" His grip around the teacup remains light and casual. She's watching him closely.

"It was a joke, Stockholm. I should have seen it then. You were too easy. I think Irina needed three things. She needed us to believe she didn't know where Sloane was. She needed you inside, telling us how to get past the security once you'd revealed his location. And she needed a distraction—you, spilling information, seemingly against her interests, while she went after him—"

"Sydney. Spare me."

"She was supposed to get you out, and she didn't, did she?"

"Sydney."

Silence. Then:

"You and Derevko and Sloane and your little round robin doublecross—my God, don't you get bored? This fucking Rambaldi game you've got us all playing. And I'm in it, but that doesn't mean I have to make it easy. Can't use me if you can't find me, right?"

She takes in a lungful of scented steam from the cup, maybe to hide the emotion pulling at the corners of her mouth. She's looking down but he saw the quick glitter of tears, and the anger jabs him so hard he shifts on his feet.

"And you know, there's probably still a traitor in my section of the agency—or was, last I knew. Too many nicely timed disasters for it to be a case of hacked data feeds and good analysis." Her voice is still steady. "You wouldn't want to tell me about that, would you?"

He's not going to answer that one, either.

"No, I didn't think so." A tentative sip of scalding tea. He follows suit, watching her carefully. She's almost forgotten where she is, he thinks. But then she looks up, and her eyes are cold and tired and very much aware of him.

"So I can't go back to the CIA and I won't go forward to Sloane or Derevko. What's left but sideways? It was Toronto-Rotterdam-Vancouver-Hong Kong, if you want to know, and here I am, next stop unknown, and that's really all there is to it. If you want to make Sloane's day, Sark, get on out there and let him know. He'll pay you top dollar, I'm sure."

She's gambling he won't try, and he wonders why.

He's stalling, really, because otherwise he'll have to consider the fact that her story, if it's true, means that he's made the wrong assumption all these months, and he's too tired to look at that objectively just now.

Sydney's not with Irina. Irina's not with her family.

She left him in the cage because she had other priorities, perhaps. Or, perhaps, because she had no choice.

"You want me to come back some other time, Sark?" He's been staring at Sydney, blind, trying to deal reasonably with the idea.

"Because I do have a few other notions."

He takes a convenient drink of tea, gesturing at her to continue, though he'd rather be anywhere else, where he might concentrate on this little struggle with the reflex that tells him he's got to find Irina because she might need him.

Irina's daughter smiles bitterly and he shifts again. She doesn't need the sidearm, he thinks. Every word out of her mouth is potentially crippling.

"—The one that doubled my friend Francie, she was yours, right? Not Irina's style, and Sloane—he's a disaster as a handler. Couldn't run somebody like that if his life depended on it. She was young."

Was.

So she didn't get out, he thinks.

"She all but killed Will. I think the ambulance got to him in time. I'm pretty sure she's dead."

Not _I killed her_.

"—I'd take credit but I figure her blood's your problem, like Francie's is mine, and Will's. I should've made better decisions."

Matter-of-fact, voice level. Another quick glance down, another drink to hide the convulsive breath, the mouth pulled out of shape. He sees her willing him not to notice, daring him to sneer. The teacup is burning his fingers.

She didn't get out. Allison.

He'd tried to find her, that first month out, without tripping alarms. Came up with nothing, hoped she'd gone to ground in Rio.

She had a failsafe. He knew about it but she would never tell him the details.

"From my mouth to Irina's ear?" she'd said, laughing at him. "Not a chance, English."

She knew he wasn't English. She loved to annoy him. Allison.

He sets his cup down carefully on the hotel's polished side table. It's been months since he gave her more than a passing, regretful thought.

She knew the risks. He'd given her every chance to back out before the procedure. They'd both known what could happen.

He'd promised her he'd make it right. But they'd both known what could happen.

Allie.

It's just fatigue that's making all of this more difficult than it should be.

Sydney. Getting Sydney out of here is the current priority. He'll need to dim the lights soon. His eyesight's the most important thing he's got, just now, next to steady hands. Next to patience. It's never been difficult to engineer a confrontation with Sydney Bristow.

"Francine Calfo was Sloane's choice," he says. "The asset herself was mine."

—Are you hearing me, Sydney?

She nods.

Evidently not.

"The order to kill Tippin was also—"

"What was her name?"

She's really unbelievably good. He's off balance again.

He's damned if he'll talk about Allie.

He looks down at her and it should be amusing that her face is so stern. Self-righteous Sydney, always handing down the verdict on other people's crimes.

She's right about Allison. His mistake.

"I'm afraid I don't remember," he drawls viciously, and she launches herself at him, knocks him off his feet and backward into the chair behind, her weight sinking him into the cushioned trap. Her hands are locked around bunches of his shirt and leaning hard on his chest, weighing him down like stones. She's talking, voice low and shaking, while he tries to get a trickle of air back into his lungs.

"I know you gave the order. I know Francie was Sloane's idea. I even know that your asset probably left Will alive because she had second thoughts. I've had a lot of time to think about this, Sark, a lot of time. Did she ask to be taken out? Did you tell her Not yet?"

Her face is so pale, so close above his. Yes, he thinks. I did.

"Did she know that if she'd killed me, you would've had to kill her? Is that why she finally let me win?"

He can't process that.

She's got one knee between his legs, resting like a promise of pain against his groin; he can feel her shaking with controlled violence and he knows this might still be straight down the agenda. He also knows it's not an act. She's talking as though she can't stop.

"I didn't just kill her, Sark. We fought like animals, really hurt each other, tried like _hell_ to kill each other with our bare hands and then I shot her three times and she had my best friend's face _and I want to know, Sark, What was her name?_"

He's still looking up at her and unless he wants to concede he can't let his gaze drop for even a second, though the light's too bright and his head is aching like fire. He wills his heartbeat slower. He knows she can feel it under her clenched hands.

He's aware of how badly she wants to maul him; it's coming off her in waves. Her physical presence is overwhelming and he's suddenly struggling with an explosive impulse to touch her. She would beat him bloody if he did and the thought tempts him. One of them ought to do something, at least, to the other.

Her breath stirs the air between them. She smells of oranges and, slightly, of Gunpowder tea.

"Allison Doren was her name," he hears himself say. He allows himself to close his eyes against the glare, just for a moment.

She pushes brutally away from him and walks past the chair, and he's finally able to take a breath. He listens for the door opening. Hears nothing.

The lights go down at the same instant he notices that her shoes are still on the floor directly in front of him.

He's out of the chair and away from the framing glow from the window, seconds too late. Outplayed again—you're nil for three, you poor sod. You're past it. Allie would laugh herself ill.

Irina would kill you.

Irina's daughter is moving across the room and he can't even get to the SIG Pro he keeps strapped to the underside of the occasional table before she's back and he has to retreat. How many bloody times does she have to prove it?

"I left the nine under the table," she says. "Nice piece."

She's giving him plenty of room but she's still closer than he is to the table. She's got Irina's silhouette in the ambient glow from the window. She's going for the gun.

"Here," she says. "I'll get it for you."

Not a move he can make. She reaches, slips the pistol out of its harness. Checks the safety.

Lays the gun on the table.

"You can do one of two things, Sark," she says. She moves toward him, leaving the weapon. "Either one is fine with me." Her voice is tired, too, and sounds almost apologetic.

Her face, indistinct in the near-darkness, is very like Irina's. She's closer now and he understands finally that there's more to this than mere jostling for tactical advantage, or maybe it's that there's less, and it should be amusing. Are you going to kill me, or just fuck me?

He's still, feeling her approach as a soft movement of the air around him. His own breath is a hard, rhythmic sigh while he waits for her, and she's finally so close that he can reach out and pull her forward into a starved and furious kiss because she's made it seem like the only option left.

It must be that the dimness is such a relief. It must be that her warm hands against the back of his neck are so insistent. It must—Christ—

"_Upryamuya_," he mutters against her mouth, badly disoriented.

_Stubborn_.

She laughs low in her throat but won't let him pull away. For Christ's bleeding sake, you fool, he thinks. This is not Irina 

It might as well be. She's just as mulish as her mother.

Irina never kissed him like this, never gave him back this low, enticing hum of approval when he touched her.

Irina's daughter is warm and pliant and greedy for him in the chill air of the suite; she wants him out of his clothes, already has the first buttons on his shirt undone, but he seizes her hands. She protests but won't stop kissing him and it would be so easy to let her take him this way, pretend it's just what it seems to be. She's adrift and he's a familiar face and he knows she's always been curious.

And he's tired and he wants her, in a way—Irina's child. Untouchable, always, and she discarded him so easily—

He works his mouth free but can't seem to level his breathing because she's freed her hands and gone back to undoing the buttons on his shirt. It's unaccountably erotic and he wants to move closer.

Fucking Sydney Bristow is not part of the program.

He sees her looking at him in the near-dark, waiting with obvious patience while he fights for the last ditch.

Fucking Sydney Bristow.

"I don't mind a spot of charity work," he taunts. "But, Sydney, what happened to scruples? I kill people for money, darling, remember? An unlikely stand-in, surely, for Michael Vaughn?"

She presses her hand, in answer, against the erection now obviously straining his tailored trousers and he moves in surprise because, really, who would have imagined this?

"And I'm not Irina," she says, and he's still thinking _Touché_ when he feels her hands against his bare skin, and stops caring. He's not that tired.

No finesse in the way he strips her where they stand, no subtlety in the way he handles her. No room for manners, and none that he ever learned, anyway, that serve when matters seem so desperate.

Are you going to kill me? Or just fuck me?

—Not going to kill her tonight and she's right; it's as good a way as any to play out what's between them. She's pulling him closer, bare legs close against his thigh, and though he's still clothed it seems he feels the warmth of her skin even this way—

He'd give in to her insistence but he's concentrating, at present, on the strangely intense pleasure he feels at the movement of her body between his hands. She could hurt him badly but it pleases her instead merely to struggle inside the cage his hands make around her waist while he takes in the scent of her hair, his face against her neck.

He curves one palm around the rise of her breast, bends down and breathes against the smooth arc, tastes the pebbled surface of the nipple—bites down softly as she strains against him, wanting more. The sound she makes is a goad and this is all going to be settled very quickly—

"—_moya krassavitsa_," he mutters, pulling her forward, clumsy as a boy. She stumbles after him, panting, and comes up hard against him when he freezes, hearing himself.

Feels her hands turning him round to face her, pulling his head down; her kiss, rough and impatient—

"I don't care," he hears. "Sark? I don't care."

Caught between loathing and desire, he can't move. You should be past this by now, is his distant thought.

"Have a crisis on your own time, Sark."

—That's amusing. He notes that his breathing is still ragged and he's definitely responding to the sight of her body, radiating warmth and reflected light in the cool air. She's surprisingly coltish without her clothes: square-shouldered, long-flanked, big hands and feet.

She takes his hand, presses it flat against her belly, moves it down to let him feel how ready she is, how wet. She shudders against the touch, reaches for him involuntarily, and that, somehow, is enough; he moves his hand, stroking her more deliberately—she's right again, this is something he knows very well how to do—and smiles with a touch of malice at the despairing note in the sound she makes.

"Here," he says, pulling her into the next room.

Out of his clothes and he's fifteen again, the woman's body a force stronger than gravity and his cock and his lust-impaired brain between them urging him to further stupidity: Perfect and Now and Need you against her mouth, and he has to divert the impulse by devouring her, piece by piece, where she's lying stretched out and sighing for him. He hasn't, apparently, lost his skill; she's writhing but she's also impatient.

Too impatient, and he's on his back well before he's finished, but that's how it's going to go, it seems. She'll kiss him to death soon, he thinks, trying to breathe. His skin is so terribly receptive to whatever she's doing with the palms of her hands. He's not accustomed to being this vocal and he's not sure he likes it.

It's only that there's been nothing for so long but the clean, passive, enveloping pleasure Madame Jiang's women deliver. This woman is blunt and strong and demanding and doesn't care, really, what he wants.

—Trying her teeth on his hipbone and she laughs at the shiver that goes through him. Her tongue tracing the pelvic cut, wet fire from hip to hairline, teasing. Warm breath against his cock, warm mouth, oh, Christ, not yet—

He pulls her up and rolls over, reaches into the lacquered box on the nightstand, always well stocked by the hotel. She's evidently confused by his sudden move until she hears the telltale sound of the foil packet being torn and then she's dragging him back down, distracting him—

"—Oh, God, Sark, forget it—" she's actually laughing, breathlessly, and the sound of her voice is a shock, for some reason. "—Don't you see how funny that is?" Pushing him back till he's supine and losing track of things and now she's biting him, tigress Sydney, down his neck to his shoulder and keep going, Christ, don't stop—

He gathers his wits, in a hazy sort of way. Takes a handful of her hair and pulls till she protests. Reaches again, retrieves an unopened condom from the box.

"Be quiet," he says, and grabs her wrist. Holds up the small, square packet between them so she can see it. Puts it deliberately into her hand. "Take care of it."

He can see her smile in the dimness but has to close his eyes suddenly because her hand around his cock is just too intense—no, she's not delicate at all about handling him, making quite a production of the business, till he lies back again and pulls her down just to get her to stop.

"No good?" she asks, panting; straddles one thigh with her legs sprawled out long and smooth against his. Starts again with small, concentrated bites down his abdomen and he really can't permit it, not when it makes him make sounds like that—

He shoves her away, onto her back; incorrigibly, she reaches for him, leaning up on one elbow, draws him down, one strong hand at his hip, pulling him forward—

"—Like this?" she breathes, and he's down against her and she's a furnace—

—Her hips rising, her hand guiding him and he's in her all the way, hard, God, move, move—

—Too well-schooled to give way in spite of how she sounds, and he's going to watch her come apart under him, anyway, before he lets go.

"Like this," he tells her, and forces himself deeper, till she can't stir more than an inch or two—but she does move that much, and the tidal power of it moves him with it, stronger than he is. She slips her hand between them, helping herself, but he won't have that.

"Like this," he says, his thumb finding the spot she was looking for. It's all she needs.

In the faint light he watches her head strain back, the long neck arched in a perfect curve, her profile fierce in the stress of orgasm, the beautiful line of her jaw so tense it might break if he touched it; he's panting and she's wordless, only gasping and moving against him as though struck.

—Yes, he wants to say, but it's too much, and words abandon him along with thought and memory and everything but the huge dark wave that's about to come crashing down on him—God, always, always, the need for completion becomes the fight for control and he wants it, oh, Christ, but submission is never easy—

He bows under the force of it and lets it take him, comes so hard his voice cracks. He'd disintegrate if he weren't so deep inside her, her hands the only thing holding him together while the orgasm hammers him flat.

He lets her breathe, finally, disengages and rolls over with a quiet moan, completely spent. She laughs softly. Takes care of the condom. Slants a leg and an arm over him, her head on his shoulder, her skin still hot under his hand.

He's as exhausted as if they've been at it for hours, the way he and Allie used to do it, steal the time and make long slow love, her gentleness with him a deep secret between the two of them. The woman in his arms is not the same but fits against him just as sweetly. He drifts toward sleep.

Five 

"—Time?" he tries to say, but her fingertips are weights against his lips. She leans over and kisses him lightly. She's dressed and standing by the bed. He can smell his own scent on her hands.

Not good, that she got so far without rousing him. The whole situation is disturbing. He stirs, limbs heavy as stone.

Sydney Bristow. Not in the program.

"Shh," she says softly. "It's dark. You never really saw me." She sounds as though she might be smiling. He's very uneasy but so tired he'd be reeling if he were on his feet.

"—No—." Entrances, exits: don't ever lose control of them. She touches his mouth again.

"It's okay. Go back to sleep now."

She leaves as quietly as all the other women he's had here and he listens for the snick of the lock as she closes the door behind her.

He staggers out of bed and into the next room, checks the door and the switches to the electronics. She's left the Ruger on the table, the magazine beside it. The nine-millimeter, back in its web on the underside, is fully loaded and set at half-cock. He replaces the clip in the smaller gun and makes it back to the bed, sliding the weapon under the pillow.

He sleeps.

Six 

He stretches his spine against his seat in the sleek jet's undemocratic cabin. The meeting went extremely well and he'll be following up in Yunnan next week; the long-term potential is exceptional. Cash knows no ideology, but the PLA will be more comfortable dealing with his Chinese agents, once they're in place, than with any Russian bidder, for example, in the matter of arms and materiél. And some of the Chinese equipment is excellent, the resale value quite considerable.

An up-and-back to Shanghai, four hours one way by private military jet. The People's Liberation Army is always ready to entertain a wealthy investor.

A flying meeting to discuss purchase of an interest in one of the PLA-owned clubs in Beijing Road. A matter, it's understood, of ensuring _guanxi_—access, special consideration—within the military elite of the regional Guard. The proposed investment is modest, relative to his other affairs, and the return irrelevant.

Colonel Wu of the Shanghai garrison headquarters is cordial; he prefers to meet potential patrons in the quieter ambience of an exclusive brothel, also PLA-sponsored, in Huashan Road. Sark's Mandarin doesn't extend to the impenetrable Shanghainese dialect; Colonel Wu's English, in any event, is elegantly idiomatic. They strike an agreement in principle: a joint venture with a consortium of Taiwanese construction executives.

Sark has also won access to certain specialized personnel within the Hong Kong PLA garrison, a side benefit that's in itself almost worth the price of the deal.

He needs to read the files on the other attendees expected at a small social gathering, planned for next week, hosted by the managing director of Hong Kong's biggest container terminal operator. He needs to nail down the location and plan the dry run for Chiu's job.

He needs to consider the problem of Sydney Bristow, sitting like an unexploded mine in the center of everything he's built: crippling, destructive, a magnet for disaster.

She may, of course, be gone. He's had other priorities; their last encounter almost convinced him that whatever she's after, it's nothing to do with Irina.

One quick little fuck, all of fifteen minutes' worth, and what he really wants is to be in her again and rocking them both into oblivion. Appalling, but true. True, but pathetic.

Irrelevant.

Not in the program.

Seven 

Chauffered Rolls from Chek Lap Kok back to the Mandarin and he's headed out to Wan Chai on foot an hour later, just as the rain comes on again. His target for Chiu's job dines at the same restaurant every Thursday night during the summer. There are enough older buildings along Johnston Road and its tributaries that he can set up and execute without ever showing his face on the main drag. The crowds might be a problem but he's under no time pressure; he can wait weeks if necessary.

Not his preference, and he's got to find the right spot and secure it through cut-outs; his local contacts aren't yet solid enough to be trusted with too much information. He slogs through the deluge, cap pulled low, checking routes and angles. The streets are still busy, the shops as crowded as ever. He's careful but he feels the fatigue more, for some reason, in the rain; he has to fight to stay sharp.

He's got three possibles and it's late. He'll have to go back to the Mandarin; he'd thought to take the ferry back to Kowloon but he's too noticeable, soaking wet, to get through the Peninsula lobby without comment at this hour. He's seen no sign of Irina's interest. Nor of Sydney. Not that he expected to.

She hasn't come back to him. She doesn't want him, maybe got all she needed—whatever it was—that first time.

Tomorrow. He's going to find her at the university. He's going to find her in the park. He's going to go to the temple and drag her into a corner and fuck her through the wall.

He's going to bloody well forget about it.

He's too tired and she's not who he really wants, anyway.

He steps out of the elevator and stops because she's there, turning as if to leave, though there's no way out but where he's standing. She looks almost frightened, a thing he never believed he'd see. Faces him as though he's some sort of ordeal she has to pass, God knows what, and takes a breath.

"I thought—" she begins, but after that brief paralysis he's already crossed the narrow, scented space and she gives way, Sydney Bristow, till her back's against the door and he can reach his hand to her mouth, touching her mute—enjoying the victory more than he should, really—and say, with gentle satire:

"You thought?"

That stiffens her spine, starts a frown between her brows. She pushes her shoulders away from the door, wanting to force him back a step. This is a familiar game between them, an old game; he wants to laugh but she might misunderstand that.

She's miscalculated, this once. He puts a hand against the small of her back and draws her the last few inches forward, letting her feel how hard he is, already wanting her. She takes a breath as though to protest but decides, at the last second, against speech.

He bends his head to take her kiss and has enough sense left to put his thumb to the biometric lock behind her. It flashes green and he pushes the door open. They stumble in and let it close behind them.

He'd forgotten, somehow, in the intervening week, about her way with a kiss, but he remembers now and he's got her back against the wall again, knee between her legs, hands under her shirt, pulling her close, greedy mouth tearing frantically into hers and it's so good, so good—

Shirt buttons torn away, nothing underneath but Sydney, Sydney—

He tastes salt in the hollow of her throat, feels the cool allure of her breast against his lips, takes in the scent of her and sighs into the maddening, enslaving, utter perfection of the velvet skin of her belly—and the trousers she's wearing are an unacceptable impediment—

Fastened at the back. He undoes the zip and drops to one knee, dragging them over her hips, down to her knees, forcing her legs apart as she staggers back against the wall. Sweeps his hand roughly through the dark, crisp, tangled hair between her thighs, ignoring whatever she's saying.

Bends his head, opens his mouth against her, dying for her—she's potent as brandy, ripe and warm and so wet against his tongue. She was too impatient, last time. He wants her now, every last bite.

He hears her gasp, feels her hands in his hair, takes a bite—she's a peach, a melon, a whole market-full of forbidden fruit, silky on his lips, drenching him, juice running down his chin—

But not sweet, never sweet; she's elemental—rainclouds, wet leaves, lakewater—

Nothing like Irina; this is Sydney. Nothing. He breathes deeply, filling his lungs with her.

"Sark—" his name a hiss between her teeth, "—don't—" panicked, maybe, at the raw demand of his mouth against her, but he's not listening. Her clothes are still in the way. He pauses long enough to rid her of them, no finesse, no time for it, and her skin feels feverish under the palms of his hands.

She's not stopping him. She doesn't want him to stop. "Sark—"

He pulls her closer, starved, too long since he's had her—hears her gasp again as she starts to move with him, open to him now, hips canted, legs wide—

That's better. There's more of her this way. He takes her greedily, leaning in, lapping at her—she's sinuous as a mermaid between his hands, and how that moves him; he's tasting seafoam, kelp—feeling her, soft as sealskin against his cheek, smooth as pearl in his mouth—Wanting her, Christ, he feels how it will be, feels what she needs—

She's moaning, very softly. He lightens the pressure of his mouth, finds the hard, sweet center of her, feels the intensity of her response when he circles her clitoris with his tongue. Again, again, he's going to come just listening to her—

—Shh, too much. He's barely touching her, now, but the delicate stroke of his tongue is inexorable, and she's sighing with need half-satisfied, pleading with him for more. He teases her, laughing very low, slows down till she presses closer, complaining—even her voice sends a tickle of sensation to his lips. She moves—he pursues, letting her feel the edge of his teeth. She laughs in turn, helplessly, head thrown back, and braces one leg wider to give him more room. She's glad of him—more than Irina ever was—

He feels her find the rhythm, follows the subtle sway of her hips, feels every small change, every jolt of sensation. The urgency of her movement knots his belly He's aware of the perfection of her skin, taut and alive with stress against the palms of his hands. He pulls her closer still, his hunger sharp, unappeased, her name, Irina's name, endless echo in his head—and she's saying his name—some name—not Irina's voice—

This isn't Irina but he's voracious, can't get enough, impossible, and he's fierce, holding her hard, no escape for this one, she's his now—he exults in her cry, her weight surging against him, the sudden pulse of heat, the satin feel of her as she comes against his open mouth.

He breathes through the dark tangle, wanting her scent; softens his hold, breathing her, drinking her like wine—oak, smoke, cherry bark—while she gasps, legs braced hard as steel but unsteady under his hands.

He hears her take another shuddering breath, lets his hands fall away from her.

Drops his head back; looks up, finally, at Irina's daughter, at Sydney, sees something like a smile in the brown eyes as she slips down to her knees and kisses his mouth, still smeared and warm. They end up together on the polished parquet floor in front of the door and he's actually in pain, Christ, it's been years since he was this out of control, and he can't take her on the floor of the Tamar suite at the Mandarin—although, why not?—and he can't believe the feel of her against him as laughter shakes her, damn the woman.

He feels an answering smile curl his mouth. His clothes are still wet from the rain and she's almost naked and must be hellishly uncomfortable sprawled over him on the wood floor. Laughing.

Not what one looks for, normally, after a performance such as that.

"Any complaints, Ms. Bristow?" he asks, and he finds he's running his fingers down the skin of her back. It's ridged with scars.

She's still laughing, forehead against his shoulder, and it's strange how that feels like a relief, though his cock is trapped painfully between his belly and the fly button on his jeans and, on the whole, death would be preferable to further delay.

She rises to her feet with that uncanny physical couth that's always, truth to tell, intimidated him just a bit. Looks over her shoulder, but he's slow to notice because her beautiful ass is so—beautiful, and the curve of her spine sends another jolt of pure lust weltering through him. Even the marks crisscrossing her back are lovely, a message in cipher carved into her skin.

Her grin gets him to his feet, however. He shrugs out of his shirt, undoes the jeans with a silent prayer of gratitude, moves forward so he can take handfuls of her long, fine hair and pull her head back, baring her throat. She's still, submitting to his heavy touch.

The geometry of her face is stark in the dim light, eyes, cheekbones, mouth like the bright points of some new constellation. He finds her pulse with his lips.

"Sydney?" he says softly, his mouth to her ear, and the smell of sandalwood—

"Yes?" Her voice is rough because her head's back against the palm of his hand.

He takes a long breath against her skin. "Are you going to kill me?" he asks, "or just—"

His other hand, at the curve of her waist, registers the little shiver that goes through her, but it's his mouth against hers that gets the full delicious resonance of her laugh.

"We'll see, won't we?" she says.

Eight 

He's prone on the solid platform rising just below the window, with the Barrett up on its bipod. A sniper's mask hides the blond hair and fair skin, and the balance of his clothing is black, down to the cotton-lycra gloves that leave his fingers exposed. The room is stifling and he's sweating freely but the target's head and shoulders are beautifully clear through the scope and Sark has temporarily forgotten his body, his awareness focused on the brightly lit doorway in search of complications, threats, anomalies.

The best site for Chiu's job has proved out as he'd hoped; it's an old office above a storage room used by a group of glassware vendors, clear line of sight about 400 meters from the back door of the restaurant. The weapon's delivered on schedule, a modified Barrett M99 with a Russian-made optical scope fitted to the rail, the silencer, and two five-round magazines with high-carbon loads. He inspects it for numbers but the piece is clean, as guaranteed. The checkout assembly and live-fire test are satisfactory.

The weather holds for tonight's dry run but he's expecting the worst when the job is actually at hand. Tonight the target arrives on schedule, his driver pulling up to the back entrance, discharging the passenger. He's a regular customer and an important man—in his own mind—and it's his habit to inspect the kitchens before being seated. His bodyguard is merely decorative, of no concern to Sark except as a physical obstacle.

The target's mistress, lately Chiu's, waits for him inside, at the table kept for their use each week.

The back door opens outward at an unfavorable angle relative to Sark's position, shortening the target's availability. The restaurant manager always comes to meet his best customer, but the angle of the shot will likely prevent collateral damage.

He frames three clear shots in thirty seconds of visibility—adequate, not ideal. The driver will likely be the first to react but Sark's exit is close and covered; he's not worried about being located. If the first shot's not clean he'll have time—but it's usually clean.

He scans the surrounding shadows through the night-vision scope he's brought along. The alley is usually empty; it's likely there will be no other witnesses. Rain will mean umbrellas and other complications, and things might destabilize. No way to tell in advance.

The target always exits through the front. Sark's put together a fallback in case he can't take the shot as planned, but it's dicier—a rooftop halfway down the block from the front of the restaurant. He won't risk a visit today. If it's raining on the actual night it'll be moot anyway.

He's done as much as he can. He breaks down the Barrett and heads back to the Mandarin. He hasn't used the suite at the Peninsula in weeks. Sydney doesn't know about it and yes, it's willfully, appallingly bad judgment that he'd rather run the risk of too-regular visibility than find that he's missed her, some night, left her waiting while he's somewhere else, not sleeping.

He never knows when she'll be there. He never visits her flat. She's never, since the first time, entered the suite without him.

They don't eat or drink or even speak much together. She never stays the night.

The boundaries are narrow and strict and caught inside them is something he can't look at too closely—his motives, hers— but also won't willingly do without, for the moment. Just for now, and at least he's learned to keep his breathing under better control in that instant before the elevator door opens onto the foyer and he can see her—or not.

He can see her.

Nine 

There's no rush, it seems, tonight. He's kissing her in a meditative sort of way, sprawled over her on the bed, enjoying her languid movement against his thigh, and he raises his head, licking his lips.

"What have you been eating?" he asks, because she tastes sharp and fresh and the inside of her mouth is cool.

She blinks, focusing, and he's aware that it pleases him shamefully that Sydney Bristow should be so distracted by his kiss. She grins and he notes the lopsided curl of the corner of her mouth and especially the dimpled line to the left of it—

"Shouldn't a food snob know what fruits are in season? I thought you were such a connoisseur, Sark."

Not even a hint that the subject makes her think of her friend, the one Allie—

"I am a connoisseur," he replies, and shifts away from her just enough to slip a slow, wicked hand between her legs. She rolls her eyes.

Very well.

He slides his fingers through the crisp hair and down into the warm, wet, unbelievably soft zone under the protective folds of skin, and draws them back up again, lingering very lightly over the small knot of her clitoris. She takes a sharp breath. She's deliberately still, won't give him the satisfaction of moving against the slow stroke of his hand.

He does it again, more slowly still, pressing gently against the pelvic bone; feels the muscles contract involuntarily. She can't quite suppress a quiet little sound, and he smiles. He could keep her going this way for hours.

She let him know from the first that she wasn't interested in technique.

"I'm not a software program, Sark," was her remark.

If statements and do-loops: calculated pleasure. She assumes it's his way with Irina, he surmises, or maybe Irina's with him. Not that she cares, seemingly, what he and Irina do. Did.

She cares a great deal about not doing the same, that's all. She doesn't want him smooth and clever and cool, likes him better raw than refined, and he can play that as well as he does anything else.

She's definitely a bit agitated now.

He withdraws his hand very slowly, trails his wet fingers up to the space between her breasts. Her breathing is uneven.

"Blue-eyed bastard," she says softly. He licks his fingers; he's already hard as rock because her scent trips some Sydney-sensitive neuroreceptor and he's just another one of Pavlov's dogs, every time.

"I am a connoisseur, Sydney," he repeats. "Can it be that you need a reminder?"

A challenge, but he knows by now she won't respond. She never lets him turn it into a contest. He's tried to goad her into some sort of resistance because, after all, that's the kick of it; they've always been adversaries.

She started it, in fact, taunting him: Are you going to kill me …?

Uncanny echo of Irina, how she always showed him some hard choice, made him fight for satisfaction, forced him to surrender something in order to capture the prize only she could bestow. It was exhilarating. He always won.

Sydney won't play that way. He remembers the night he was too obviously intent on getting a reaction, more involved in making her dance to his tune than in enjoying her. She actually left him early, unsatisfied.

A first, that. Sydney and her scruples. He finds it strange.

He's propped on one elbow, crowded up against her, one leg over hers. He's curious.

"It's all just sex, Sydney," he says, moving his hips provocatively. He adds, inviting retaliation, "And I'm very good."

That slow smile, so like Irina's. She reaches, matches his movement, and he has to make a sound, only a small one—

"You," she tells him, "have no idea."

—And perhaps he does surrender something to her—for her—like this. Perhaps he would.

The bed is four meters square. They meet here and nowhere else.

But how they do meet.

End Part II


	3. Weather

WEATHER ++++++ One 

Sark lounges in the comfortable ambiance of Madame Roche's sitting room. Adjacent, through a pair of French doors, is her office, set into one high corner of the frowning Second-Empire monstrosity at 19 Rue de la Croix-d'Or, Genève.

The two rooms are decently appointed but not opulent, a measure of the national distaste for egregious display. The Swiss summer is bright and cool outside the window and Sark is at his ease, more or less, for the first time in months. He is studying the contents of a file Madame Roche has just handed him.

"Your accounts have been unusually active of late, dear boy," she observes, watching him turn another page. He raises his eyes.

"Yes," he says, "I've been a nuisance, I realize. I'd hoped to soften your indignation with good news."

Madame is small, leonine, maned with white; she tilts her head. The deep lines at either side of her mouth crease with her smile.

"Always a pleasure to see you, my dear." Her tone is sedate. "Though I'm afraid we must discuss the telecom properties you acquired last year through the Holt AG entity. The risk profile, in the current economy …" She lets the sentence trail off, her smile growing. He's quirked a brow at her.

"Of course, Madame," he agrees politely, and she laughs out loud.

"_Ciel_, what an irritant you are! Were those eyes one fraction less blue, my boy, I would have sold you to my less-forgiving confrères in Zurich, not a doubt of it!"

Sark smiles sweetly. He sets the file down on the glass-topped table between them.

In the black pelagic waters of private transnational finance and its attendant concerns, Madame Roche is a very big fish indeed. She's been his chief financial advisor for nearly a decade. She leans back in the wing chair opposite him, her own eyes cold and gray as a winter sky. Her smile disappears.

"Now tell me," she says, and he slots a RAM-stick in the black console at his elbow. A diagram appears on the flatscreen display against the near wall, columns of unitless numbers and curves with coordinates unlabeled.

"These projections …" he begins.

"Ramillies."

Madame Roche is brooding, her fingers steepled, having grilled him for more than an hour on the particulars concerning his latest independent investments and the configuration of the corporate structures set up to handle them.

Everything he's showed her is ostensibly legitimate, naturally; her ability to read above, below, and between the lines is remarkable. The net profit from what he's presented will be flowing back to her own establishment with the assurance that none of it will ever be of interest to prosecutors. The total worth of his accounts will increase by several orders of magnitude.

Her chief concerns satisfied, she considers, without actually alluding to its purpose, his engagement of one of her competitors for the riskier business of routing a large stream of illegally acquired cash into more transparent areas of the global economy.

"They've done well for you," she declares. "I believe it's all in order."

He sits back, relaxing again. He hadn't really doubted it; he's reasonably thorough. She pours him more coffee.

"It has been more than a year since I saw you last," she remarks, an invitation to disclosure.

"An eventful period," he says cordially.

His association with her has always been private and direct. She has no information, officially, on his former connection with Irina Derevko's organization, nor of his consequent severance from it. What she actually knows, he believes, is considerable.

"_Bon_," she says briskly. "A time of many changes, yes. But still I remember my charming client, my blue-eyed _homme fatal_, who neglects me and then calls upon me for expensive favors."

She's baiting him; her commissions are huge. He smiles.

"Yes, I have something else for you," she says, and hands him another RAM-stick. He ejects his own and inserts it. A surveillance image appears on the wall display. A man.

A man he knew, once upon a time.

"I remembered your former, mm, interests in Buenos Aires and wondered whether this might be of concern to you," Madame is saying.

A former Alliance supporter of Arvin Sloane's, obviously deceased.

"I consider it my duty to protect my clients' investments, naturally," she continues. "This duty sometimes extends to a certain watchfulness concerning peripheral matters that might threaten to—escalate."

She gestures for the remote. He hands it to her, watches the next image appear. A building in flames. Several buildings.

"A medical facility, research only. And this is in Prague …" A gutted building, the damage evidently fresh.

"The premier biotechnology laboratory in the region. And this—" A figure silhouetted against another building, wreckage everywhere.

A closer shot, and his hands flex involuntarily on the arms of the chair. He relaxes deliberately. He knows what's coming.

And closer. Detail very pixilated here, but the subject's clear.

"Where?" he asks. Cool, smooth voice, always the same. No answer.

He looks at the woman in the chair opposite.

"Where?" he repeats, very gently.

She looks back at him, unmoved.

"The question, surely," says Madame Roche, "is: When?"

He leans back. "Either will do," he says. And: "Is there more?"

She taps the remote.

—Irina, in profile, firing a rifle of some kind at a distant figure, her body beautifully relaxed, stance perfectly balanced. His hands are still.

—The figure in question, obviously fleeing, flanked by two others. Something about the posture…

—A very blurred enlargement, but still clear enough to allow identification: Arvin Sloane, still on his feet.

Sark turns his head against the leather wing of the chair.

"Who put this together, Madame Roche?" he asks quietly. She smiles.

"Oh, my dear, my staff is really very good. But I confess that the most arresting images, the woman and her … target, came from an unexpected source. Someone I don't know at all." She flicks the remote again and he watches, thinking, oddly, of Sydney, because he knows …

Jack Bristow.

Two 

Madame Roche's little information bomb: The only real jolt in the entire performance, objectively considered, is the number scrawled in blue ballpoint on a scrap of white cardstock. _M_. Bristow's emergency contact, Madame Roche had explained.

"Of course," he'd replied, smiling.

Jack Bristow had engineered the introduction to Hélène Roche through an exclusive and secretive organization of private bankers—one riddled, obviously, with security holes. He'd presented her with a packet of information on the chance, he'd said, that one of her clients might find it of interest. She'd made the correct analysis after a certain amount of auxiliary research. Her subsequent intelligence-gathering on Jack Bristow himself is a given. She doesn't mention it.

Sark's analysis has a different focus.

It's interesting, naturally, that Irina is still alive and still gunning for Sloane, assuming those images are genuine. Better to know it than not, but that's really where it stops. Purely personal considerations aside, the information's worthless to him.

On the other hand, there's Jack Bristow's number, the undoubted point of the whole exercise.

There's the distinct possibility that he's let Sydney play him for a fool.

Geneva-Amsterdam-Hong Kong, fifteen hours.

Plenty of time to go over every moment of each encounter, and everything between, and to conclude that while he is, clearly, a fool, it's not with her connivance. Somewhere, Jack Bristow is laughing.

Reviewing every word from every possible angle. She's never asked him anything. For anything, beyond the obvious. A cup of tea, once.

You can do one of two things, she'd said to him that time, leaving the weapon within his reach. Either one is fine with me.

And before that:

Are you going to kill me? Or just—

He thinks of her in the park, following the old woman through each turn of the t'ai chi set, face as blank and unmoving as a doll's. Of the man she'd sent away that day at the university library. The pathetic place she lives in, so empty it might be tenantless.

Sydney Bristow, the gifted, the great, the standard he'd once aspired to reach, subsisting on academic scraps to get her through till the world's sane again? It's already been more than a year, and the brown eyes that used to burn so hot are ashy and cold and dead.

Sydney Bristow, discarding her convictions every time she steps through his door? Compromising till there's nothing left to lose?

Sydney: Never more dangerous than here, and now.

He'd hesitated even to tell her he'd be gone; neither of them has ever said a word about next time. There is no next time. Until there is. He knows there've been nights when she's come to his suite and he hasn't appeared. Plenty of nights when he's waited for her, sleepless, till dawn.

It seemed rude to withhold the information, this trip being a longer one. He wasn't specific about how long.

An awkward moment, outside the boundaries they're easy with.

The helicopter picks him up at Chek Lap Kok and heads for the Peninsula. He won't go back to the Mandarin tonight. Perhaps not tomorrow night, either.

She could be gone, of course. She's been here almost three months. Time to move on, Sydney.

Midnight again and he's made some headway through the backlog of new files and incoming contacts, his circadian stutter more pronounced with the recent displacement to another time zone.

He's been too long without sleep. Chiu's job is up tomorrow night, or so he's planned; a few hours' rest is essential. He encrypts the documents he's been reading and shuts down the notebook, aware that he's been deluding himself all day. He telephones the hotel's remote helipad.

He makes it across the harbor just before the rain comes on, stranding the pilot.

He might as well be sleepless at the Mandarin.

He hadn't actually expected to find her here. She waits for a moment after the elevator door has closed. He hears her say quietly:

"I can leave. You look tired." She hasn't moved, not wanting to crowd him, he suspects. He opens the door to the suite and pulls her gently inside, turns up the lights a little.

"No," he says, and finds he can't formulate any further reply because it's suddenly clear that what he would have to say and what he would mean by it are, for once, perfectly congruent.

"No," he says instead, and the feel of her long hair between his fingers is marvelous, but what's going through his head is this:

I flew halfway round the bloody world to pick up a message from your father, Sydney. He'd like to speak with you.

And this:

They all want you. I want you. You're only a wildcard to them but if you work with me you'll deal the whole bloody hand. If you're going to be a player, you're going to be mine.

Hurting her gratuitously would be stupid but if she's going to hurt herself regardless, making the wrong choices, he'll take whatever he can get.

He realizes he's been staring at her for the last minute. She's got that scorched smile in her eyes, as always when she knows he's thinking about Irina.

"Which one am I tonight?" she asks, and he knows it's not a stab or even a slap, just Sydney's damned bleak sense of humor, and it really doesn't matter to her that he's thinking of her mother. Only, of course, he isn't.

He runs his fingertips along the neckline of her shirt, liking the way her eyes narrow at the sensation.

"The other Agent Bristow isn't half so sexy," he murmurs, because her father is very much in his mind. The brown eyes widen for a second, then narrow again, the corners raying out with laugh lines.

"I don't know," she says, low-voiced. "Some people think he's really hot."

Irina among them, of course. Wicked Sydney. He feels his mouth turn up. Is laughter really appropriate, he wonders, when things seem so irremediably fucked? Perhaps it's the only thing that is.

"Now you're worrying me, Sydney," he says, finding the zip on her skirt.

"You should talk," she replies, sly kick at the speculation—rife, once, around the CIA watercooler—that Irina Derevko is actually his mother.

He raises a brow. She's not really asking him, just trying to provoke.

"Would it matter?" he asks, curious now. They sometimes end up in surprising places, the two of them, when they talk. She looks back at him and the darkness glitters in her eyes. She reaches for his wrist, starts on the buttons at his cuff.

"Not enough to make me stop," she replies, and he finds that's really all he can take, for the moment. She's smiling, intent on the task. The figured Chinese rug they're standing on is knotted silk, heavy and soft. That will be fine for tonight.

"Nobody chooses damnation, Sark," she says, while he works at making her forget whatever's got hold of her tonight. "It just—arrives."

An edge of desperation there, and her pulse has started to pick up, so he knows he's making progress. He breathes against her temple, combing her hair with his fingers.

Typical Sydney, a bit heavy on the melodrama, but on the whole an accurate picture of the case. She's not really talking about herself, in spite of their earlier exchange. It's him she's seeing, and there's a kind of hopeless understanding in her voice. He kisses her hard to shut her up.

Damnation isn't how he thinks of it. And it's nothing he hadn't figured out years ago.

He's going to have to give her that number. He's going to have to find Irina. Break things down to their component decisions and it's usually true that the simplest move is the best.

—But now he's in her, each hard stroke a reply to her quickening motion against him. Watching her let go; and this time it has the simplicity of flight, her sudden gasp an expression of utter delight at leaving the ground at last. She opens her eyes, still sighing, and he leans to kiss her smiling mouth as he feels the prelude to orgasm begin to wash through him.

And he wants, oh, yes, he wants to drop his head; bury his face against her neck and hide his eyes, because he's really very tired and they ache, sometimes, but he makes himself watch her watching him as the feel of her around him sweeps everything away like a strong, clean wind from some new country. She draws him down against her and he lets it blow him away.

She's getting dressed and he's pulled on his jeans. He sees her pause, obviously being tugged toward the door, but hesitating. Sometimes she'll leave him with a light kiss. Sometimes not.

Something odd in her look, in the soft glow from the wall sconces. She comes back toward him.

He never anticipates, won't reach for her.

No kiss this time, just her fingertips following the narrow, furred line that starts beneath his navel and disappears into the unbuttoned waistband of the jeans. It's still a mystery to him how she can make the simplest thing unspeakably erotic.

She seems mesmerized but lets her hand drop, finally, steps away from him again. Her voice is low and offhand.

"Irina's such a fool," she says.

Not a molecule of air he can use, for an instant, but he tries, tired as he is, to deal with it reasonably.

"So are you," he says, after a moment. It's the only thing that occurs to him.

Her smile is brilliant in the low light. There's no sound as the door closes behind her.

Three 

He's pacing the suite, which is too damned small, and he should catch up on reading because there's always a backlog. He doesn't even bother to open the safe.

Sydney Bristow in his bed: A very high-risk pleasure.

She appears—perhaps—and they fuck, and for just awhile afterward—also perhaps—they're quiet, lying together. She leaves. It's simple.

You'd think, under those circumstances, that he'd be able to get some sleep. But she's gone for the night and he's wide awake and wound tighter with every bloody hour that goes by. Sleep is an unreachable necessity. This will be made manifest when he botches Chiu's job for lack of it.

He'd thought the problem was diminishing. They removed the possibility, the CIA, holding him in that glaring glass cage, of simple rest. He's been doing it to himself ever since he got out.

A self-destructive game, maybe. Terminal disgust over the earlier mess he'd made. Allison.

Revenge, maybe. Sydney, standing in for her mother, going down with him when he finally sinks for good because—is he admitting it?—he's let the Bristow women drag him in too deep. Again.

No. No, soberly considered, things are moving according to strategy. He's planned carefully and built well; his nascent organization will shortly be making itself known in several areas of enterprise. Chiu's job is all but taken care of and those new funds will start flowing shortly. Irina's evidently distracted with other things and there's been little sign of other trouble on any front. He'll be getting out of here on schedule.

He catches his reflection in the sitting room mirror, stares at himself, suddenly displaced. Same eyes, same face. He doesn't know what she sees, Sydney. They're mostly in the dark when they're together.

She left two hours ago. He wants her back.

He can't operate on his own forever and there's no one like her: partner, ally, so formidably talented. He knows it would bring Sloane and Irina and a whole dark flock of old trouble circling back down on them like a band of harpies. Jack Bristow most of all. The chances, anyway, are so slight. He's got no leverage, as he once did, that would force her in his direction. She'd never agree to it.

Keep repeating that until you understand it. She will never say yes.

"The only good thing about secrets," she'd said tonight, "—they don't have much of a shelf-life."

Quiet hope that she'll wake one day and find that her strategic value on the chessboard has sunk to zero. That she can go home. She doesn't really believe it.

—Because we'll kill you before we'll let you quit, won't we, darling, and what are you doing here, suffocating in this bloody, bloody heat, fucking a thug in a bespoke suit for lack of anything better?

He hears himself breathe in the silence, too fast.

Christ, man. Get some bloody sleep. You're losing it.

Four 

The vertical landscape glitters in the stifling air, looming shapes rising into the occluded night sky like skeletons lit from within.

On foot to Wan Chai, Thursday night. The approach to Johnston Road is crowded, as always, tiny storefronts and huge emporia alike clotted with chattering groups. The fortune-tellers' stalls are mobbed by waiting customers. Propped against the wall of a shop selling jade trinkets, an old man is scraping a bow across an ancient-looking _erhu_. The Rolling Stones' "Ruby Tuesday" is the tune that emerges in an eerie, dopplered wail.

The sun's been a hammer all day, striking the steel-and-glass surfaces till the heat is so intense it sinks of its own weight into the canyons formed by the high buildings. The rain's held off but it won't for much longer. He arrives at the glass-vendors' storeroom through a maze of backstreets, with twenty minutes to spare. His target is always prompt.

The Barrett's waiting in its case under the false bottom of a packing crate on the ground floor. Sark retrieves it and slips up the stairs.

He removes the baseball cap that's concealed the sniper's mask rolled up to his hairline. His hair is already drenched. The mask's integral sweatband is half soaked.

He assembles the Barrett, positions the bipod, sighting through the scope, till it's approximately right. Snaps in the magazine and pulls on a pair of cotton-lycra gloves, fingerless. Then the mask is down and he's prone on the platform, effortless shift to perfect balance in the familiar position. He adjusts the scope for windage and checks the filter. No glare from the lights.

He's forgotten his fatigue, abandoned the consciousness that he has a body, that it's uncomfortably warm, that time is passing. The weather is holding.

The vehicle turns into the alley on schedule, pulls up to the door. He watches the bodyguard step out, no umbrella, and open the rear passenger door. Sees the back door to the restaurant open simultaneously, the restaurant manager emerging as the target straightens and exits the car. The bodyguard bending to close the door. The manager extending his hand. A choreography of arcs and angles, beautifully clear and comprehensible to the sniper.

Now a single second divides itself into infinite parts. In one of those tiny slices is a perfect picture through the scope, and the sniper is only an eye, only a brain. There is no trigger, no hand embracing it between one breath and the next. Only the shot, achieved.

The target is down.

Sark is still, watching through the scope. The kill was clean. He still needs visual confirmation before he can let Chiu know that his ex-mistress won't, in future, be dining out on Thursday nights.

The little knot of panic between the vehicle and the restaurant door seems to dissolve. The car lurches out of position, nearly ramming the opposite wall in the narrow alley. The bodyguard and the manager are both on the phone. The manager disappears, returns with what looks like a tablecloth in his hands. He drapes it distressedly over the humped figure on the ground.

The rain comes suddenly, roaring like the apocalypse.

Sixty seconds. Gloves. The cartridge retrieved. The Barrett disassembled and back in its case. Sark gathers up the thin layer of plastic covering the platform's surface and folds it to carry away whatever trace he's left of himself.

He steps into the downpour, the rain streaming off the Yankees cap. On the main road, in a sea of umbrellas, the crowds are hardly thinner than when the sky was merely overcast. He meets Chiu's driver two blocks away, is driven to the waterfront at Causeway Bay and let off. Sark has agreed to use Chiu's resources but keeps his arrangements for disposal of the weapon to himself.

The storm anchorage is crowded with boats but there's no one about. He slips into an unoccupied marine supply warehouse and threads his way through piles of tackle to a corner behind an old bank of files. The Barrett's components go into the drum of industrial solvent he finds there, followed by its case, and the plastic, carefully unfolded. Later they'll be retrieved, weighted, and dropped into the South China Sea.

He returns to the waiting driver and directs him to the Mandarin. On the way, he notifies Chiu's cutout that the contract has been discharged. The funds should start flowing within the hour.

And now there's Sydney—perhaps. He's going to have to give her that number.

She hated playing the prize in her parents' mad games with Arvin Sloane. He wonders whether she'll understand that she can be all that she was and still remain free of them.

He's got so much to offer. She could take on any of a dozen projects without feeling tainted. He'll do whatever is necessary to carve them up into clean, acceptable bits, things she can look at. It would surely be a relief for her to stretch herself again, be who she is.

It's so clear. She'll see that, surely.

If it's Michael Vaughn she wants, he would even try to give her that, if he could. He can't afford to be possessive. He needs her too much.

Chiu's driver has overcooled the vehicle. Sark is shivering in his drenched clothing.

She never stays long. If he's going to try, it's got to be tonight—if she comes tonight. He's known for days that she's preparing to leave.

Five 

A hand holding her wrist, where she's started on the buttons to his rain-soaked shirt. A hand to her face, fingers following the line of her jaw, asking for her attention.

—Stop a moment, just let me do this.

He releases her, steps back, not wanting to confine her. He holds out a square of white cardstock, retrieved from the mantelpiece, inviting her to reach for it. She does.

"Your father left this with one of my people in Europe," he tells her. "It was delivered to me last week."

She looks down, takes in the number. Looks back up.

"Do you know where he is?" she asks, and he's surprised at her calm.

"No, Sydney. I don't know anything. I'm the—very reluctant—messenger. He seems to know, somehow, that you and I might be—in touch." She's staring at him, weary comprehension in her eyes. She smiles, tentatively.

Oh, but there's worse, Sydney.

"He's either working with Sloane or in pursuit of him," he says. "I'm afraid I've been unable to determine which. I had thought that he might be with your mother, but that appears not to be the case.

"Before you decamp," he adds, "perhaps you could leave me a more direct contact."

He watches the smile fade till there's nothing on her face, her eyes blank as a statue's. He lets it drift, downs the impulse to touch her again. She's silent.

"If you'd rather avoid further involvement in the Rambaldi business, I can offer an alternative. I could use your help, occasionally," he says, finally. "Your terms, Sydney; anything you want, nothing you don't. It's a seller's market."

It would sound desperate but his voice has always been like this, light and lazy and cool. That last sentence was probably a mistake.

Still nothing, and he's about to compound his error by speaking again when he hears her take a long breath. She steps forward till they're touching and he knows she wants his arms around her, though she'd never ask. That costs him nothing; he pulls her gently forward and it's clear, this close, how hard it's hit. Her heart is slamming.

Another long, shuddering breath. Come on, Sydney, say something—

"Later," she says into his shirt. "Later, okay?" She raises her head, brushes his mouth with hers.

Again. And harder.

—Anything you want.

Nothing you don't.

He guessed how it would be, her emotions so dense with a year's containment that she's either got to break the dike or switch off entirely. He tries, at first, simply to absorb what's pouring out of her but finds soon enough that her exigency is a fire, as it always has been, and he burns, of course, as he always does.

She's still wordless, has never said anything, since that first time, in all the times they've done this. He guesses, now, that she might, or might want to, but hears only their breathing and the sounds they make. And now she's on him, he's in her, and they move together and she's so strong that the surge of her orgasm forces him out of whatever control he had left—

—Like embracing a bolt of lightning ripping its path to the ground, always so intense with her but not like this. He wants to close his eyes as the flash blasts him to dust but she won't let him this time, holds his gaze in the soft light, and he gives way all at once, the connection so profoundly direct he experiences it as injury.

Killing me, he thinks, and hears himself keen like an animal.

—Hello, goodbye. Pleasure, pain—

Perfection, or nothingness?

He reaches for both, refusing the choice. It's the way he's always been.

And for a moment afterward, as always, feeling the astonishing comfort of their bodies together, adjusting into each other, shifting minutely till it's right—for just that long, he can truly rest, while she touches him gently with her long, strong hands, and he listens to her breathing slow.

She was tired when they started. They both were. They lie together for a long time and maybe, he thinks, this time she'll just give in and sleep, which might mean that he could do the same. But eventually she moves, and he stares at the ceiling in the near-dark. Stubborn, and he knew it, really.

She struggles out of bed and into her clothes.

"Sydney," he says, "we're in the middle of a typhoon." Not really, but it's still coming down in sheets, the usual summer deluge.

"Yeah, that's okay," pulling the shirt on over her head, beautiful line from hip to waist to breast, silhouetted briefly, hidden now.

He can think of a dozen ways she might fit into his life, two dozen, more—she's slipped the leash, why shouldn't they run together for awhile?

—Three dozen ways, if she would consent to any of them, and why shouldn't he ask? It's as good as anything Irina ever taught him to want.

"Sydney." His voice sounds tired, even to himself. "If you promise not to garrote me in my sleep, you're welcome to stay." Keeping it light, hoping she'll laugh.

She's roaming now, always tries to leave her things in a neat pile—when he'll let her—but always checks, anyway, to make sure she leaves nothing behind. She straps the felted sheath around her forearm and that's always the last little chore before she goes.

"Sark."

She comes to rest briefly at the window, outlined by the glow there, false neon daylight even through the downpour, and though her face is blurred in the dimness he knows by now who she is. Who he wants her to be. Not Irina.

"Thanks. Really."

Her voice, of course, has always been her own. It's soft and almost expressionless, at the moment, and now she's out the door, and he's clear that she's not coming back. It was too soon to ask. He knew it the instant the words were out of his mouth.

He hears the rain pound the building and allows himself to wonder, for a moment, what it would feel like to go after her: find her, stop her, bring her back.

Hold her still, just once, and ask her what he could possibly give her, of all the things a man like him might offer, if only she would stay.

End

July 14, 2003

-----------------------

Non sum qualis eram bonae sub Regno Cynarae 

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine  
There fell thy shadow, Cynara. Thy breath was shed  
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;  
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,  
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:  
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,  
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;  
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;  
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,  
When I awoke and found the dawn was grey:  
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara, gone, gone with the wind,  
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,  
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;  
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,  
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:  
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,  
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,  
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara, the night is thine;  
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,   
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:  
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion.

--Ernest Dowson (1896)


End file.
